TechHub, The Heart Of London's Tech Scene, Expands In Eastern Europe

Asking what made East London so attractive as a location for aspiring companies revealed one common theme: TechHub.

TechHub is the shared workspace at the heart of London's tech scene. Combining ergonomically designed desks for collaborative work with a super-fast broadband connection, it's been the initial home to many of the innovative companies in East London — and it's looking to expand its horizons, with the company today announcing that it's opening a new location in Prague.

TechHub's management is keen to stress that it's not just a workspace. "We try and define ourselves as a community," says operational manager Mike Marcus. "TechHub could actually exist without the work space—not that we're going to."

The company recently opened its second location in Riga, Latvia after being impressed with the city's start-up scene. With the new location in Prague it may seem like TechHub is focusing on Eastern Europe but that's not the case says Marcus; it just happens to have panned out this way.

All this expansion poses a few problems. “As we expand globally we face challenges," says Marcus. "We need to make sure we don’t end up with a number of separate communities, we need to have one global community.”

One way of doing this is with TechHub's website, launching in a couple of weeks. "It's really much more than a website," says Marcus. "It also provides social networking and adds a virtual layer on top of our global locations. That’s going to be very important in our future.”

"Separating cause and effect is quite difficult; things grow organically and things move quickly," says Marcus. "We certainly opened as a response to a need and hopefully we’re having an effect; I believe we are. We certainly improved the nature of what people call Silicon Roundabout and hopefully we can do that in other locations."

With its new location in Riga (and the future location in Prague), TechHub is trying to emulate its success in London, providing a common link between all members of each city's tech scene. If the organization was only partly responsible for London's tech community flourishing, it's hoping to have even more of an influence in Riga.

“There isn’t really an organic cluster of start-ups over a certain area like there is in London," says Marcus. "But, we feel that actually that can benefit a lot of people. One of the reasons for opening up in Riga is that we feel there’s a suitable area for a cluster forming and we’re actually predicting it. We’re hoping that we’ll draw from people from the spaces around and hope that we get an eco-system going.”